Difficulty of O-Chem rxn on DAT??

[blumnday99]

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My old o-chem professor used to give us reactions that looked correct, but were missing a reagent so no reaction would occur. Has anybody seen anything like that on the DAT?

For example, reduction with sodium borohydride (NaBH4) requires H+ and H2O. Will there be a reaction that would have NaBH4 and H+, but no H2O and have no reaction as one of the answers?

I want to know if it is worth the time to memorize every little detail about the reagents. I can typically tell which reaction is going to occur based on the products and reagents, but I don't think I'll be able to tell if there's a reagent missing. I also think that having a set of 5 answers can help me if I get lost. I've been doing O-chem problems from my old textbook and have been doing fine.

Mark

 

[Sprgrover]

Heck, no! You will not find any questions that are designed to trick you on subtle details. I was wondering the same thing as I was studying for the DAT and was pleasantly suprized to find otherwise. If the DAT asks for a reagent for a particular reaction - say something requiring Friedel-Crafts Acylation - then one of the answer choices will clearly contain the correct answer and the others will make no sense at all. This goes for the rest of the section as the questions are very straight forward considering how hairy they could make them (like those on my o-chem exams!). Rest assured that you don't need to waste another minute digesting and trying to retain many of those picky, minor details as you won't need them.

 

[blumnday99]

Heck, no! You will not find any questions that are designed to trick you on subtle details. I was wondering the same thing as I was studying for the DAT and was pleasantly suprized to find otherwise. If the DAT asks for a reagent for a particular reaction - say something requiring Friedel-Crafts Acylation - then one of the answer choices will clearly contain the correct answer and the others will make no sense at all. This goes for the rest of the section as the questions are very straight forward considering how hairy they could make them (like those on my o-chem exams!). Rest assured that you don't need to waste another minute digesting and trying to retain many of those picky, minor details as you won't need them.

That's good to hear. Hopefully I'll do better on the O-chem section than I did in my o-chem lecture.

Mark